Hello all! I applied for the exceptional talent route on the 4th of July and received the rejection letter on the 23rd of July. My categories were Mandatory Criteria, Optional Criteria 2, and Optional Criteria 3. I passed OC2 but failed in the other two. Below are my appeal arguments in response to the feedback from the assessor:
EXCEPTIONAL TALENT REJECTION APPEAL STATEMENT
Mandatory Criteria:
• Assessment panel feedback:
“There are no keynotes at leading global tech events where he shaped the direction of his field”.
I mentioned that I was invited as a guest to a YouTube livestream organized by Neo4j on the 26th of April, 2022 to discuss an analytical solution I built using Neo4j graph database technology; an event that was viewed live by 500 people, and has received over 800 views at present. Here is a link to that YouTube live stream event for your convenience (https://www.youtube.com/live/ZADwMoBJ6GQ?si=LS-ksV09mMk2yxfc). I also stated that I was one of the scheduled speakers at the International Social Media Research Summer School organised by the SMR Foundation, who are the developers of NodeXL, where I delivered a technical talk on two open source software projects I developed in conjunction with the Foundation, namely OpenAlex4NodeXL and Spotify4NodeXL on the 16th of January 2024. An event that had 100+ attendees via Zoom. I shared my speaker certificate and schedule of events with you as well as a poster of an upcoming speaking engagement between July 29th and August 2nd 2024. I can authoritatively say that these speaking and public technical engagements have contributed to the field of graph technology by facilitating the adoption and development of graph-based solutions, and also by creating increased awareness about the value and potential of graphs for solving a host of research and management problems. I also mentioned that I was invited to do a technical deep-dive into building text-to-image solutions using generative AI technology by the Data Science Society of Nigeria on the 15th of February 2024. At that event, I also spoke to a virtual audience of 100+ attendees via Telegram video conferencing, discussing diffusion models, how they work and how to use them to generate images from text prompts. At the end of the event, I shared the Google Colab notebook I used to build a Python application with the attendees. I shared a screenshot of the feedback I got from some of the attendees with you as well as a link to the presentation slides. Here is the link to the slides for your convenience (From Words to Pictures: A Technical Deep-Dive into Building Text-To-Image Solutions - Google Slides)
• Assessment panel feedback:
“Despite over 10+ years in the field, we are unable to see sustained recognition for the applicant by way of sustained awards at a national or international level”.
I mentioned the international award I received in 2023 from The Data Lab Scotland as one of 3 winners in a global data visualisation contest, which was announced to over 500 data and AI professionals at the 2023 Data Summit with my name and profile mentioned to the audience. This award resulted in my networking and collaborating with Rory Gianni, the co-founder of inChat as well as Yuko Itatsu, professor at the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo.
• Assessment panel feedback:
“There is no public or media coverage of his work recognizing his contributions and leadership in the field”.
The above-mentioned international award was reported in FutureScot – a website which is the authoritative voice for public sector digitisation in Scotland – with my name and profile mentioned in the report. I included a link to the report in my application document for your perusal. Here it is again for your convenience (Five Scottish primary schools win international data visualisation competition | FutureScot). My award-winning entry is an open source dashboard showing the collaborative efforts of researchers tackling mental health issues, namely depression, anxiety, and PTSD. This project has attracted commendation from a world renowned psychologist in the person of Dr. Pim Cuijpers, who corresponded with me by email acknowledging my project as drawing attention to mental health issues and the ongoing fight against them. Here is the link to the dashboard for your convenience Research Collaboration Analytics (research-effort-analytics.netlify.app)
• Assessment panel feedback:
“There is no public or media coverage of his work recognizing his contributions and leadership in the field”.
I mentioned that I have written over 200 technical articles on Statistics Globe, which border on programming concepts in R & Python, data visualisation, generative AI, and large language models. These articles helped to demystify intricate subjects for a broad audience, facilitating their understanding and application in real-world scenarios, and are estimated to receive an average of 30,000 monthly readers, receiving very positive feedbacks from readers, including industry experts. When it comes to data science in R & Python and programming tutorials, Statistics Globe remains a leading knowledge provider in the world, and I was the most prolific of writers on Statistics Globe, with 200+ articles to my credit. Here are links to just two of my articles on the website and proof of my articles numbers for your convenience:
• Assessment panel feedback:
“We note his contributions to the open-source community but are unable to see any recognition he has received for this”.
I mentioned that I have been recognised by SMR Foundation for my contributions to open source technology that have added value to the tech field and advanced the sector – a fact that you also acknowledge. This recognition is in the form of them creating a profile for me on SMR Foundation website. This puts me on a similar pedestal with the core members of the Foundation who are all very recognised experts in the field of digital technology. Here is the link to my profile on SMR Foundation website for your convenience (Ifeanyi Idiaye › Social Media Research Foundation). Also, I stated that I have contributed over 30 open source Spaces on Hugging Face, which is the leading open source AI community. These spaces contain all the code I used to build applications and software. These contributions earned me recognition as a member of Gradio’s development team, a group of over 300+ experts working on enhancing the functionality of the frontend of Python’s Gradio web framework. I included a screenshot to that effect in my application. I have also been recognized as Top Contributor by Gephi’s online community of about 10k members for my contributions to the advancement of social network analysis with Gephi, including my development of OpenAlex4Gephi software.
Optional Criteria 3
Assessment panel feedback:
“we need to see third party evidence in order to corroborate his claims. Employment proof doesn’t demonstrate significant contributions or impact in terms of metrics. The reference letter lists his different projects but we are unable to see why they are significant and what impact they had on XXXXX’s results and success. We need to see impact in terms of metrics”.
First of all, I want to clarify that I signed a non-disclosure agreement, which prohibited me from sharing any technical documentation, software architectural diagrams, manuals, and code repositories with a third party, including those I either developed or contributed to their development. Consequently, I could only share with you screenshots of GitHub repository, publicly hosted analytical reports graphs, and the interactive map interface of the in-house software I developed. Secondly, I did mention more than a couple of metrics measuring the impact of my contributions to the business of XXXXX in terms of percentages. Here are these mentions for your convenience:
• Revolutionising Twitter analysis by introducing the Google Text Rank algorithm, which reduced tweet processing time by 65% and significantly enhanced our ability to detect influencers, identifying about 100 in a single run and increasing our audience database population rate by 16%. Please note that XXXXX is in the business of selling Twitter audience insights to corporate organisations who want to target specific accounts with their marketing campaign ads.
• I developed the GeoTrends application, which is an application that runs on the local server within the company and is used to automate the monitoring of Twitter trends in different European countries. At the time when I took the initiative and single-handedly developed this software, there was no freely available solution that the data science team could leverage in their workflow to efficiently run the influencer detection pipeline. This innovation, therefore, significantly boosted the efficiency of our in-house data science team by streamlining workflows by 20%, thus enabling the data science team to quickly find trending keywords and hashtags in different European countries that are used to run the influencer detection pipeline. The success of the application laid the groundwork for our company to expand its business to include offering social monitoring services, which has strengthened its position as a leading provider of Twitter audience insights in the world.
• I integrated text and emotion analyses into our software platform that is used to sell audience insights to clients. And this integration increased client engagement with the platform by 15%. The integration of these analyses helped us to better understand our clients’ specific needs and equip them with the tools needed to create emotionally resonant and impactful campaigns.
• I created a private IPFS (Inter-Planetary File System) cluster, enabling the storage and retrieval of files and records, as a decentralised alternative to traditional databases, with the potential of saving XXXXX thousands of dollars every month on running Amazon’s EC2 instance. I have not shed any light on the impact of this decentralized technology because it has not been implemented yet.
While I have 10+ years of experience in the field of digital technology, I have submitted only the relevant pieces of evidence that I have acquired in the last 5 years as per Tech Nation’s guideline.
The above appeal arguments are just a draft. Nevertheless, I would greatly appreciate your feedback about these arguments, what I need to adjust, include, or correct. Thank you in advance.